How do you get places? My father likes traditional printed maps, but those are pretty impractical if you’re traveling solo. The last place I lived, I got around using Post-It Notes with abbreviated Google Maps descriptions scrawled on them. Some of my friends liked to print the whole Google Maps directions, but that also doesn’t work great without a copilot. My other alternative is getting lost. There has to be a better way!

I recently moved to a new state, and I’ll be spending most of my work life traveling. I’d been looking at purchasing a GPS device to use in my car anyway, so I was excited to take a look at one of Navigon’s latest and greatest, the 7200T.

The Navigon 7200T is a slim, stylish black unit that also hits hard in the features department, with highway lane assistance, lifetime free traffic updates, voice entry, Bluetooth calling, a 4.3" wide screen, text to speech ("turn left on Elm Street"), and more. However, what sets Navigon apart is its map views. Interface is crucial on a GPS, and the Navigon 7200T’s packs a lot of information onto one attractive screen.

Read on for the full review!

Most of the 7200′s lovely wide main screen is taken up by the map. I’ll go into the features later, but first I want to focus on the meat and potatoes: what’s the 7200T like to travel with?

(Note: images with the JAMM watermark are mine; others are from Navigon’s website.)

Routing

I had no problems with routing using the Navigon 7200T. It recognized all the new roads near my office and handled the one-way maze known as downtown with ease. I’m still learning my city, but I never felt that the Navigon sent me on a strange or bad route. Rerouting after a wrong turn or an executive decision was quick and accurate. The 7200T didn’t nag me for making it recalculate or freak out and insist that I make a U-turn RIGHT NOW. It just calmly directed me where to turn next.

Navigon offers an optional map update service called FreshMaps. For $79.99, you get up to 12 map updates over three years.

Navigation

To start with, the verbal directions are good enough that I could comfortably get from Point A to Point B without ever having to look at the screen. Text-to-speech technology tells you which street to turn on. (It’s always seemed ironic to me that many GPS devices, which are designed to help people who need directions, require you to be an expert at gauging distances. If I was that much of a spatial genius, I wouldn’t need a GPS!) Directions are polite, detailed, and not so repetitive they get annoying.

The text-to-speech isn’t perfect — like most, it mispronounces a lot of non-English origin words, and it sounds more like a series of words than a sentence. Also, only one of the two voices on the device handles text-to-speech, and I think she may be Canadian. However, the audio is clear, and the volume goes loud enough to be heard easily over music unless you’re really blaring it.

After you enter a destination, the 7200T’s SiRF InstantFix II GPS receiver grabs a satellite fix if it doesn’t have one already. This usually took 15-30 seconds in the city, a bit less in open country. It flashes an overall route preview and then starts in.

Navigon’s maps are some of the most attractive out there, clear without being cartoony, with well-designed color schemes for both day and night. The view is like hanging in the sky and watching the route stretch ahead into the horizon; I could usually see several turns ahead in the city, but the zoom factor in the foreground was also excellent. The screen refreshed smoothly, with no jerkiness or other weird behavior as I moved. The 7200T displays 3D images of major landmarks, but unfortunately there didn’t seem to be any in my neck of the woods so I was unable to test them. It also shows POI icons that float above the address, a creative touch that quickly became one of my favorite features.

Moving to the other information on the map screen, a large lower-left button shows the next turn; tap it to hear the spoken directions again. Above it, a speed limit sign displays when it is available, which seemed to be only on highways. The 7200T will nag you with a warning when you go too fast, which can be configured separately for urban and rural areas (or just turned off). On the highway, a green bar at the top shows up to display the next exit. Exit names are easy to see, but the numbers are so tiny that reading them requires concentration you don’t have to spare.

Icons in the top right show a few status measures and compass heading. Again, these are so small they are not very useful when you’re moving. Traffic alerts display on the right side. Unlike many devices, the 7200T has an integrated traffic receiver and doesn’t require a subscription so the alerts are free for life. I found the alerts to be accurate, but they were mainly useful to let me know how far I could expect to be crawling. The 7200T’s ability to route around the traffic never helped me, but since the geography of my city means alternative routes often just don’t exist, it wasn’t an ideal testing spot.

At the bottom, two bars display the current and next roads with distance to destination and a generally accurate notice of either time left or ETA (but not both). Another row contains access buttons for destination entry, options, Bluetooth calling, volume, and zoom. My most-used button, the back arrow for destination entry, is also unfortunately small and stuck in the corner. Navigon has clearly made an effort to keep the interface looking streamlined while packing in a lot of features, but there are a few spots where usability got caught in the middle.

When you’re approaching an exit or interchange, everything I just described changes while the lane assistant takes over. Arrows in the lanes show which one you should be in. It doesn’t quite live up to its photorealistic billing, but it definitely comes in handy.

Destination Entry

Somehow all of those destinations I’ve been talking about getting to had to be input into the GPS. Navigon offers several options: new entry, favorites, Take Me Home, and voice entry.

New addresses are entered on a keyboard featuring intelligent letter de-highlighting so you don’t accidentally press a letter that doesn’t spell a real road. I found the touchscreen here and in other places to be occasionally temperamental and slow to respond. In good moods it works well. For both addresses and POIs, at any stage of destination entry you can return to a higher level by pressing tabs across the top.

You can also choose to pick a POI from the 7200T’s huge database.  There’s a decent selection that includes Zagat ratings, and you can find nearby restaurant, get directions, and make a reservation over Bluetooth calling from the same place. One drawback of the POI feature is its organization by city, which can make it difficult to track down places in rural areas or poorly-defined suburbs (i.e., most of them). However, the 7200T lets you reorder categories so your favorites show up on the first screen, and you can either pick POIs from a list or type them.

"Take Me Home" is a great feature and favorites are always nice, but the star of the show is voice entry. Voice entry is seriously cool. You just tell the 7200T where you’re going, and it takes you there. Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that, but not much. The Navigon will prompt you for city, then street, then number. It took me a few tries to get the rhythm down, but once I did I was surprised by how well voice entry worked. Plus, it’s seriously cool.

Options

There are literally dozens of ways to tweak the 7200T to your liking. Several different paths can bring up options, and when you get there they’re a bit confusingly arranged. But once you find what you’re looking for, they’re easy to set up how you like. I recommend spending five minutes going through every screen when you first get the unit, and you’ll rarely have to mess with them again.

In The Box

Navigon provides a decent selection of peripherals in the box, including a windshield/dashboard mount, car adaptor, Quick Start guide, and stylish drawstring bag. The one potentially useful missing item is an AC charger (sold separately at Navigon’s website), but I usually have mine plugged in to the car so this wasn’t a problem. I opted for windshield mounting instead of using the sticky disk for the dashboard. The mount is easy to put together and angle, and it feels very secure with everything in place.

Conclusion

I was skeptical when I first got the Navigon. They aren’t as established a name as Garmin or Tom-Tom, and the first time I used the 7200T it froze and I wound up seeing more of Wisconsin than I’d planned. However, I never had another problem with it. In fact, the more time I spent with the 7200T, the more I liked it.

The Navigon 7200T looks pretty, but it has plenty of substance to go along with its style. Navigon has packed it with a bevy of high-end features without the padding that afflicts many competitors. It doesn’t show pictures or play MP3s. Every added feature, and there are plenty of good ones, is designed to make it easier and better to get where you’re going. If you’re in the market for a high-end GPS device, the Navigon 7200T should be in the mix.

Vital Stats: The Navigon 7200T lists for $449.99. It’s available from a variety of online and bricks stores.

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